Geneseo John Doe<\/a> \u2014 a skull and scattered bones found near a creek southeast of Geneseo in 1966. The FBI later confirmed the young man had been shot, but no one knew who he was.<\/p>\n\u201cThere was no personal items that were found with the person, nothing identifying them whatsoever, and there were no missing persons reports in the area at that time, so they really had nothing to go on,\u201d Sgt. Brian Haars, detective sergeant with the Henry County Sheriff\u2019s Office, said.<\/p>\n
That changed in 2024, when the Henry County Sheriff\u2019s Office partnered with the DNA Doe Project to test the remains.<\/p>\n
\u201cExtracting DNA from old bones can be difficult, but our lab logistics team at Astrea did an amazing job getting the DNA and then generating a profile that was usable, that we could put into law enforcement databases,\u201d Gwen Knapp, team leader with the DNA Doe Project, said.<\/p>\n
That DNA finally gave him his name back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey found who they believed would be a possible match, just based on the familial matches,\u201d Knapp said. \u201cAnd so that led us to Ronald J. Cole from Ventura County, California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cole was just 19 years old when he disappeared \u2014 more than 1,600 miles from where his remains were found.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to be able to have that closure on a case that\u2019s older than myself, than most people who worked it,\u201d Sheriff Josh Verscheure said. \u201cTo finally have closure after so long is a huge thing for the family and for Henry County as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronald\u2019s family had no idea where he was \u2014 while his remains were here in Henry County. Now, this community finally knows his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe finally found his living brother,\u201d Sgt. Haars said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t surprised by the phone call, I think he\u2019d probably had some false hope over the years \u2014 he was 15 when his brother went missing, and he\u2019s 75 now. He agreed to provide another DNA sample, and we were able to upload that to GEDmatch.”<\/p>\n
Henry County investigators say they hope to eventually name a suspect, but for now they are not naming anyone as the investigation continues.<\/p>\n
The DNA Doe Project says Ronald Cole was living with his half-brother when he disappeared. Years later, that half-brother admitted to killing him on unrelated charges \u2014 but because the confession was not connected to physical evidence at the time, no one was ever charged in Ronald\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KWQC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENESEO, Ill. (KWQC) – The remains once known as Geneseo John Doe have been identified as Ronald Joe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,68591,29215,68592,68589,68590,68594,51105,4984,68593],"class_list":["post-134303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-databases","tag-dna","tag-dna-match","tag-geneseo","tag-henry-county","tag-in-1965","tag-remains","tag-skeletal-remains","tag-the-remains-once-known-as-geneseo-john-doe-have-been-identified-as-ronald-joe-cole-a-19-year-old-who-disappeared-from-fillmore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}